Cards
by OutrageousIngeniousBrilliance
Summary: The game is over, so why aren't you in Paradise?


Prompt 18/25

Cards

It's the new world, the one that you won. Not 'you' though. The humans won it, not you. Every single day you are reminded of that by your stupid head about how you fucked up everything by just existing. This world is kind of fucked up too. The humans didn't really 'win' either. They fucked up too. That's what you tell yourself anyways. It makes you feel better.

The lot of you, the eight kids and six trolls left, have been left to rot away in a clearing in the woods. You've gone hours in every direction and you can't find anyone or anything. You've been given your old houses back, but most of your stuff is gone and the world is inhospitable and mean.

You lose Gamzee on the first day. Everyone turns against him, even though he is better. You know, you know him better than anyone. He helped you in the end to defeat Lord English. No amount of yelling is convincing anyone else differently though. The eyes that meet yours shun you, but you swear you catch sparks of sympathy. You protest and fight and Dave and John hold you back as Kanaya and Terezi bring the hammer down upon his head.

You don't talk to anyone for two days after that.

The second week sends in a chill, one that devastates everything and everyone. You lose John. You waited three years to see your so called 'friendleader' only to meet him and die and then only get to spend one week with him.

You lose Jade, Dirk, Jane, and Aradia as well.

You alternate between staying with John, Jade, and Aradia. You don't really care about Dirk that much and you have very little positive feelings towards Jane, although they convince you that she was under a spell when she killed you. That doesn't change your opinion of her, just like you couldn't change their opinions.

It affects Jade quicker than the others. It takes her first, in under three days. This harsh world barely gave you any time with her and you sit by her bed and talk to her as she keeps that smile on her face. She's terrified, you see that and you turn and leave her room, passed a crying John.

You don't lose Aradia to the sickness, even though she had it. She was going to recover, she had a chance unlike everyone else due to her troll biology, but she pulled you aside and talked to you. She didn't feel _(she felt, something_) like this was where she wasn't supposed to be, she missed being dead. No matter how long you tried to plead with her, she wouldn't listen. You've never known her to break down, not like she did, so when she asked you to slit her throat, you didn't object. It didn't even bother you killing one of your friends, time had done something to your brain and you weren't the same person that won your session all that time ago.

The others didn't take it so well. Dave yelled at you, asking why you would do such a thing. The game broke him in the end and sometimes it still shows through the small little cracks he didn't even bother patching up. Seeing his brother from an alternate universe die recently hadn't really helped matters. He screams about how John and Jade and Dirk didn't get to choose to die, so Aradia doesn't get to choose how she dies. You retaliate with that is what she wanted.

The bloody human tells you that he didn't care. You tell him that Gamzee didn't get to choose either. Your back is turned to him and the words die at the tip of his tongue. He turns away and he stops talking to you. You realize that that was the last time you ever talked to him. Just when you finally got to be friends with him. Almost two years of a friendship gone in two minutes. He moves to the outskirts of the clearing with Terezi.

Terezi, wanting to forget everything and anyone having to do with almost all of her life, leaves you all to start a whole new life as a hermit with Dave. She cuts all contact with you. That hurt you more than you ever want to admit. You were her friend before all of this after all. She cuts all ties with everyone. Dave at least still keeps up with Rose and Roxy.

Rose and Kanaya live in a pretty house with a pretty fence bathed in sunlight right next to Roxy and Jake who also live in a prefect little house built upon an ancient ruin. They live almost perfect little lives together and it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth as you analyze their saccharine covered lives.

The second all of you realize that Vriska came back as well, shit went down. When you say 'down' you mean someone ate it, churned it around in their stomach, turned it into vile and then ingested it again. To summarize the first two weeks of 'Vriska's Drama Hell' would be a twenty page paper and that would need to include pictures and footnotes on top of that. The final outcome was that Rose basically tell Vriska that she shouldn't even see Kanaya again.

You live on the other side of the clearing that all of you have called your own, completing the triangle that your houses make with Terezi's and Kanaya's. You live next to Vriska of all people. After two months you realize how lonely that makes you. Three years, _years_ damn the human words assimilating into your language and making you forget little by little who and what you _are_, later and you feel more alone than ever. You see Kanaya sometimes, by which you mean once a month, which isn't often at all.

This would be like the meteor, except this is the end game and you are supposed to be in paradise. You're bored again for the sixth day in the row. You're tired of being alone, but it is the seventh day, Thursday to be exact. Thursday is the one time you actually have interaction, _regular_ interaction with anyone.

It started when the two of you waited by John's side as the sickness racked his body. As the last to die, it took almost two _fucking agonizing_ weeks. She was curled up into a ball, the rawest emotion that you have ever seen her display. You played cards with her to pass the time. If John was up to it, he wasn't almost ever especially not in those last few days, he would join. He liked to watch too, so you kept playing just for him.

She appeared at your house a week after John's death, the same day as the funeral, she asked you in a roundabout way to play cards. Ever since it has been exactly that, every Thursday. You'd start sometime in the early hours and play into the late day. You'd drink somewhere around six in the morning and wake up the next day in the late afternoon hung over.

You wouldn't remember everything, but you generally knew what was going on. The two of you laughing, you winning, her having the most stubborn of faces. You weren't anything, not to each other. You didn't talk to each other about that, you never even breached the topic, but you seem to remember more than her during your drunken outings, her only catching glimpses here or there. She always did drink more than you.

She's told you that she is lonely during the hours of not Thursday, how she misses people. The worst is Kanaya and Terezi, because they are in her grasp yet so far away. You tell you that you are lonely. You miss them too.

She tells you that she is sorry that Gamzee died.

You tell her that you are sorry that John died.

Tonight is no different. Only the realization that Vriska, loneliness, cards, and nightmares are the only things that are constants in your life which makes you get drunk again. She goes hard the first hour, while you go lighter, by the third hour things are getting hazy. She tells you that you are easy to talk to. After that, she leaned on you. You put your arm around her in one part comfort and second part reassurance and a distance third part in which you haven't been physically close to anyone in three years and you miss it.

Greed is an _ugly_ thing.

She buries herself into you and you think she may need the third part too. You've stopped playing cards a while ago as she closes her eye and falls asleep. You don't know what the means, but it feels okay to you. It doesn't bother you, but it should. As you close your eyes you think about your useless life up into that point. She feels cold against you and her horns poke you. You pull her close, because you know you are warm and she must feel cold in this disgusting planet. You hold her close and feel your eyes go heavy in your daze of sweet alcohol. You fall asleep, hoping to figure all of this out in the morning.

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